Virtue Ethics

Virtue ethics is currently one of three major approaches in normative
ethics. It may, initially, be identified as the one that emphasizes
the virtues, or moral character, in contrast to the approach that
emphasizes duties or rules (deontology) or that emphasizes the
consequences of actions (consequentialism). Suppose it is obvious that
someone in need should be helped. A utilitarian will point to the fact
that the consequences of doing so will maximize well-being, a
deontologist to the fact that, in doing so the agent will be acting in
accordance with a moral rule such as “Do unto others as you
would be done by” and a virtue ethicist to the fact that helping
the person would be charitable or benevolent.

This is not to say that only virtue ethicists attend to virtues, any
more than it is to say that only consequentialists attend to
consequences or only deontologists to rules. Each of the
above-mentioned approaches can make room for virtues, consequences,
and rules. Indeed, any plausible normative ethical theory
will have something to say about all three. What distinguishes virtue
ethics from consequentialism or deontology is the centrality of virtue
within the theory (Watson 1990; Kawall 2009). Whereas
consequentialists will define virtues as traits that yield good
consequences and deontologists will define them as traits possessed by
those who reliably fulfil their duties, virtue ethicists will resist
the attempt to define virtues in terms of some other concept that is
taken to be more fundamental. Rather, virtues and vices will be
foundational for virtue ethical theories and other normative notions
will be grounded in them.

We begin by discussing two concepts that are central to all forms of
virtue ethics, namely, virtue and practical wisdom. Then we note some
of the features that distinguish different virtue ethical theories
from one another before turning to objections that have been raised
against virtue ethics and responses offered on its behalf. We conclude
with a look at some of the directions in which future research might
develop.

1. Preliminaries

In the West, virtue ethics’ founding fathers are Plato and
Aristotle, and in the East it can be traced back to Mencius and
Confucius. It persisted as the dominant approach in Western moral
philosophy until at least the Enlightenment, suffered a momentary
eclipse during the nineteenth century, but re-emerged in
Anglo-American philosophy in the late 1950s. It was heralded by
Anscombe’s famous article “Modern Moral Philosophy”
(Anscombe 1958) which crystallized an increasing dissatisfaction with
the forms of deontology and utilitarianism then prevailing. Neither of
them, at that time, paid attention to a number of topics that had
always figured in the virtue ethics tradition—virtues and vices,
motives and moral character, moral education, moral wisdom or
discernment, friendship and family relationships, a deep concept of
happiness, the role of the emotions in our moral life and the
fundamentally important questions of what sorts of persons we should
be and how we should live.

Its re-emergence had an invigorating effect on the other two
approaches, many of whose proponents then began to address these
topics in the terms of their favoured theory. (One consequence of this
has been that it is now necessary to distinguish “virtue
ethics” (the third approach) from “virtue theory”, a
term which includes accounts of virtue within the other approaches.)
Interest in Kant’s virtue theory has redirected
philosophers’ attention to Kant’s long neglected
Doctrine of Virtue, and utilitarians have developed
consequentialist virtue theories (Driver 2001; Hurka 2001). It has
also generated virtue ethical readings of philosophers other than
Plato and Aristotle, such as Martineau, Hume and Nietzsche, and
thereby different forms of virtue ethics have developed (Slote 2001;
Swanton 2003, 2011a).

Although modern virtue ethics does not have to take a
“neo-Aristotelian” or eudaimonist form (see section 2),
almost any modern version still shows that its roots are in ancient
Greek philosophy by the employment of three concepts derived from it.
These are arête (excellence or virtue),
phronesis (practical or moral wisdom) and eudaimonia
(usually translated as happiness or flourishing). (See Annas 2011 for
a short, clear, and authoritative account of all three.) We discuss
the first two in the remainder of this section. Eudaimonia is
discussed in connection with eudaimonist versions of virtue ethics in
the next.

1.1 Virtue

A virtue is an excellent trait of character. It is a disposition, well
entrenched in its possessor—something that, as we say, goes all
the way down, unlike a habit such as being a tea-drinker—to
notice, expect, value, feel, desire, choose, act, and react in certain
characteristic ways. To possess a virtue is to be a certain sort of
person with a certain complex mindset. A significant aspect of this
mindset is the wholehearted acceptance of a distinctive range of
considerations as reasons for action. An honest person cannot be
identified simply as one who, for example, practices honest dealing
and does not cheat. If such actions are done merely because the agent
thinks that honesty is the best policy, or because they fear being
caught out, rather than through recognising “To do otherwise
would be dishonest” as the relevant reason, they are not the
actions of an honest person. An honest person cannot be identified
simply as one who, for example, tells the truth because it is
the truth, for one can have the virtue of honesty without being
tactless or indiscreet. The honest person recognises “That would
be a lie” as a strong (though perhaps not overriding) reason for
not making certain statements in certain circumstances, and gives due,
but not overriding, weight to “That would be the truth” as
a reason for making them.

An honest person’s reasons and choices with respect to honest
and dishonest actions reflect her views about honesty, truth, and
deception—but of course such views manifest themselves with
respect to other actions, and to emotional reactions as well. Valuing
honesty as she does, she chooses, where possible to work with honest
people, to have honest friends, to bring up her children to be honest.
She disapproves of, dislikes, deplores dishonesty, is not amused by
certain tales of chicanery, despises or pities those who succeed
through deception rather than thinking they have been clever, is
unsurprised, or pleased (as appropriate) when honesty triumphs, is
shocked or distressed when those near and dear to her do what is
dishonest and so on. Given that a virtue is such a multi-track
disposition, it would obviously be reckless to attribute one to an
agent on the basis of a single observed action or even a series of
similar actions, especially if you don’t know the agent’s
reasons for doing as she did (Sreenivasan 2002).

Possessing a virtue is a matter of degree. To possess such a
disposition fully is to possess full or perfect virtue, which is rare,
and there are a number of ways of falling short of this ideal
(Athanassoulis 2000). Most people who can truly be described as fairly
virtuous, and certainly markedly better than those who can truly be
described as dishonest, self-centred and greedy, still have their
blind spots—little areas where they do not act for the reasons
one would expect. So someone honest or kind in most situations, and
notably so in demanding ones, may nevertheless be trivially tainted by
snobbery, inclined to be disingenuous about their forebears and less
than kind to strangers with the wrong accent.

Further, it is not easy to get one’s emotions in harmony with
one’s rational recognition of certain reasons for action. I may
be honest enough to recognise that I must own up to a mistake because
it would be dishonest not to do so without my acceptance being so
wholehearted that I can own up easily, with no inner conflict.
Following (and adapting) Aristotle, virtue ethicists draw a
distinction between full or perfect virtue and
“continence”, or strength of will. The fully virtuous do
what they should without a struggle against contrary desires; the
continent have to control a desire or temptation to do otherwise.

Describing the continent as “falling short” of perfect
virtue appears to go against the intuition that there is something
particularly admirable about people who manage to act well when it is
especially hard for them to do so, but the plausibility of this
depends on exactly what “makes it hard” (Foot 1978:
11–14). If it is the circumstances in which the agent
acts—say that she is very poor when she sees someone drop a full
purse or that she is in deep grief when someone visits seeking
help—then indeed it is particularly admirable of her to restore
the purse or give the help when it is hard for her to do so. But if
what makes it hard is an imperfection in her character—the
temptation to keep what is not hers, or a callous indifference to the
suffering of others—then it is not.

1.2 Practical Wisdom

Another way in which one can easily fall short of full virtue is
through lacking phronesis—moral or practical
wisdom.

The concept of a virtue is the concept of something that makes its
possessor good: a virtuous person is a morally good, excellent or
admirable person who acts and feels as she should. These are commonly
accepted truisms. But it is equally common, in relation to particular
(putative) examples of virtues to give these truisms up. We may say of
someone that he is generous or honest “to a fault”. It is
commonly asserted that someone’s compassion might lead them to
act wrongly, to tell a lie they should not have told, for example, in
their desire to prevent someone else’s hurt feelings. It is also
said that courage, in a desperado, enables him to do far more wicked
things than he would have been able to do if he were timid. So it
would appear that generosity, honesty, compassion and courage despite
being virtues, are sometimes faults. Someone who is generous, honest,
compassionate, and courageous might not be a morally good
person—or, if it is still held to be a truism that they are,
then morally good people may be led by what makes them morally good to
act wrongly! How have we arrived at such an odd conclusion?

The answer lies in too ready an acceptance of ordinary usage, which
permits a fairly wide-ranging application of many of the virtue terms,
combined, perhaps, with a modern readiness to suppose that the
virtuous agent is motivated by emotion or inclination, not by rational
choice. If one thinks of generosity or honesty as the
disposition to be moved to action by generous or honest impulses such
as the desire to give or to speak the truth, if one thinks of
compassion as the disposition to be moved by the sufferings of others
and to act on that emotion, if one thinks of courage as mere
fearlessness or the willingness to face danger, then it will indeed
seem obvious that these are all dispositions that can lead to their
possessor’s acting wrongly. But it is also obvious, as soon as
it is stated, that these are dispositions that can be possessed by
children, and although children thus endowed (bar the
“courageous” disposition) would undoubtedly be very nice
children, we would not say that they were morally virtuous or
admirable people. The ordinary usage, or the reliance on motivation by
inclination, gives us what Aristotle calls “natural
virtue”—a proto version of full virtue awaiting perfection
by phronesis or practical wisdom.

Aristotle makes a number of specific remarks about phronesis
that are the subject of much scholarly debate, but the (related)
modern concept is best understood by thinking of what the virtuous
morally mature adult has that nice children, including nice
adolescents, lack. Both the virtuous adult and the nice child have
good intentions, but the child is much more prone to mess things up
because he is ignorant of what he needs to know in order to do what he
intends. A virtuous adult is not, of course, infallible and may also,
on occasion, fail to do what she intended to do through lack of
knowledge, but only on those occasions on which the lack of knowledge
is not culpable. So, for example, children and adolescents often harm
those they intend to benefit either because they do not know how to
set about securing the benefit or because their understanding of what
is beneficial and harmful is limited and often mistaken. Such
ignorance in small children is rarely, if ever culpable. Adults, on
the other hand, are culpable if they mess things up by being
thoughtless, insensitive, reckless, impulsive, shortsighted, and by
assuming that what suits them will suit everyone instead of taking a
more objective viewpoint. They are also culpable if their
understanding of what is beneficial and harmful is mistaken. It is
part of practical wisdom to know how to secure real benefits
effectively; those who have practical wisdom will not make the mistake
of concealing the hurtful truth from the person who really needs to
know it in the belief that they are benefiting him.

Quite generally, given that good intentions are intentions to act well
or “do the right thing”, we may say that practical wisdom
is the knowledge or understanding that enables its possessor, unlike
the nice adolescents, to do just that, in any given situation. The
detailed specification of what is involved in such knowledge or
understanding has not yet appeared in the literature, but some aspects
of it are becoming well known. Even many deontologists now stress the
point that their action-guiding rules cannot, reliably, be applied
without practical wisdom, because correct application requires
situational appreciation—the capacity to recognise, in any
particular situation, those features of it that are morally salient.
This brings out two aspects of practical wisdom.

One is that it characteristically comes only with experience of life.
Amongst the morally relevant features of a situation may be the likely
consequences, for the people involved, of a certain action, and this
is something that adolescents are notoriously clueless about precisely
because they are inexperienced. It is part of practical wisdom to be
wise about human beings and human life. (It should go without saying
that the virtuous are mindful of the consequences of possible actions.
How could they fail to be reckless, thoughtless and short-sighted if
they were not?)

The second is the practically wise agent’s capacity to recognise
some features of a situation as more important than others, or indeed,
in that situation, as the only relevant ones. The wise do not see
things in the same way as the nice adolescents who, with their
under-developed virtues, still tend to see the personally
disadvantageous nature of a certain action as competing in importance
with its honesty or benevolence or justice.

These aspects coalesce in the description of the practically wise as
those who understand what is truly worthwhile, truly important, and
thereby truly advantageous in life, who know, in short, how to live
well.

2. Forms of Virtue Ethics

While all forms of virtue ethics agree that virtue is central and
practical wisdom required, they differ in how they combine these and
other concepts to illuminate what we should do in particular contexts
and how we should live our lives as a whole. In what follows we sketch
four distinct forms taken by contemporary virtue ethics, namely, a)
eudaimonist virtue ethics, b) agent-based and exemplarist virtue
ethics, c) target-centered virtue ethics, and d) Platonistic virtue
ethics.

2.1 Eudaimonist Virtue Ethics

The distinctive feature of eudaimonist versions of virtue ethics is
that they define virtues in terms of their relationship to
eudaimonia. A virtue is a trait that contributes to or is a
constituent of eudaimonia and we ought to develop virtues,
the eudaimonist claims, precisely because they contribute to
eudaimonia.

The concept of eudaimonia, a key term in ancient Greek moral
philosophy, is standardly translated as “happiness” or
“flourishing” and occasionally as
“well-being.” Each translation has its disadvantages. The
trouble with “flourishing” is that animals and even plants
can flourish but eudaimonia is possible only for rational
beings. The trouble with “happiness” is that in ordinary
conversation it connotes something subjectively determined. It is for
me, not for you, to pronounce on whether I am happy. If I think I am
happy then I am—it is not something I can be wrong about
(barring advanced cases of self-deception). Contrast my being healthy
or flourishing. Here we have no difficulty in recognizing that I might
think I was healthy, either physically or psychologically, or think
that I was flourishing but be wrong. In this respect,
“flourishing” is a better translation than
“happiness”. It is all too easy to be mistaken about
whether one’s life is eudaimon (the adjective from
eudaimonia) not simply because it is easy to deceive oneself,
but because it is easy to have a mistaken conception of
eudaimonia, or of what it is to live well as a human being,
believing it to consist largely in physical pleasure or luxury for
example.

Eudaimonia is, avowedly, a moralized or value-laden concept
of happiness, something like “true” or “real”
happiness or “the sort of happiness worth seeking or
having.” It is thereby the sort of concept about which there can
be substantial disagreement between people with different views about
human life that cannot be resolved by appeal to some external standard
on which, despite their different views, the parties to the
disagreement concur (Hursthouse 1999: 188–189).

Most versions of virtue ethics agree that living a life in accordance
with virtue is necessary for eudaimonia. This supreme good is
not conceived of as an independently defined state (made up of, say, a
list of non-moral goods that does not include virtuous activity) which
exercise of the virtues might be thought to promote. It is, within
virtue ethics, already conceived of as something of which virtuous
activity is at least partially constitutive (Kraut 1989). Thereby
virtue ethicists claim that a human life devoted to physical pleasure
or the acquisition of wealth is not eudaimon, but a wasted
life.

But although all standard versions of virtue ethics insist on that
conceptual link between virtue and eudaimonia,
further links are matters of dispute and generate different versions.
For Aristotle, virtue is necessary but not sufficient—what is
also needed are external goods which are a matter of luck. For Plato
and the Stoics, virtue is both necessary and sufficient for
eudaimonia (Annas 1993).

According to eudaimonist virtue ethics, the good life is the
eudaimon life, and the virtues are what enable a human being
to be eudaimon because the virtues just are those character
traits that benefit their possessor in that way, barring bad luck. So
there is a link between eudaimonia and what confers virtue
status on a character trait. (For a discussion of the differences
between eudaimonists see Baril 2014. For recent defenses of
eudaimonism see Annas 2011; LeBar 2013b; Badhwar 2014; and Bloomfield
2014.)

2.2 Agent-Based and Exemplarist Virtue Ethics

Rather than deriving the normativity of virtue from the value of
eudaimonia, agent-based virtue ethicists argue that other
forms of normativity—including the value of
eudaimonia—are traced back to and ultimately explained
in terms of the motivational and dispositional qualities of agents.

It is unclear how many other forms of normativity must be explained in
terms of the qualities of agents in order for a theory to count as
agent-based. The two best-known agent-based theorists, Michael Slote
and Linda Zagzebski, trace a wide range of normative qualities back to
the qualities of agents. For example, Slote defines rightness and
wrongness in terms of agents’ motivations: “[A]gent-based
virtue ethics … understands rightness in terms of good
motivations and wrongness in terms of the having of bad (or
insufficiently good) motives” (2001: 14). Similarly, he explains
the goodness of an action, the value of eudaimonia, the
justice of a law or social institution, and the normativity of
practical rationality in terms of the motivational and dispositional
qualities of agents (2001: 99–100, 154, 2000). Zagzebski
likewise defines right and wrong actions by reference to the emotions,
motives, and dispositions of virtuous and vicious agents. For example,
“A wrong act = an act that the phronimos
characteristically would not do, and he would feel guilty if he did =
an act such that it is not the case that he might do it = an act that
expresses a vice = an act that is against a requirement of virtue (the
virtuous self)” (Zagzebski 2004: 160). Her definitions of
duties, good and bad ends, and good and bad states of affairs are
similarly grounded in the motivational and dispositional states of
exemplary agents (1998, 2004, 2010).

However, there could also be less ambitious agent-based approaches to
virtue ethics (see Slote 1997). At the very least, an agent-based
approach must be committed to explaining what one should do by
reference to the motivational and dispositional states of agents. But
this is not yet a sufficient condition for counting as an agent-based
approach, since the same condition will be met by every
virtue ethical account. For a theory to count as an agent-based form
of virtue ethics it must also be the case that the normative
properties of motivations and dispositions cannot be explained in
terms of the normative properties of something else (such as
eudaimonia or states of affairs) which is taken to be more
fundamental.

Beyond this basic commitment, there is room for agent-based theories
to be developed in a number of different directions. The most
important distinguishing factor has to do with how motivations and
dispositions are taken to matter for the purposes of explaining other
normative qualities. For Slote what matters are this particular
agent’s actual motives and dispositions. The goodness of
action A, for example, is derived from the agent’s motives when
she performs A. If those motives are good then the action is good, if
not then not. On Zagzebski’s account, by contrast, a good or
bad, right or wrong action is defined not by this agent’s actual
motives but rather by whether this is the sort of action a virtuously
motivated agent would perform (Zagzebski 2004: 160). Appeal to the
virtuous agent’s hypothetical motives and dispositions
enables Zagzebski to distinguish between performing the right action
and doing so for the right reasons (a distinction that, as Brady
(2004) observes, Slote has trouble drawing).

Another point on which agent-based forms of virtue ethics might differ
concerns how one identifies virtuous motivations and dispositions.
According to Zagzebski’s exemplarist account, “We do not
have criteria for goodness in advance of identifying the exemplars of
goodness” (Zagzebski 2004: 41). As we observe the people around
us, we find ourselves wanting to be like some of them (in at least
some respects) and not wanting to be like others. The former provide
us with positive exemplars and the latter with negative ones. Our
understanding of better and worse motivations and virtuous and vicious
dispositions is grounded in these primitive responses to exemplars
(2004: 53). This is not to say that every time we act we stop and ask
ourselves what one of our exemplars would do in this situations. Our
moral concepts become more refined over time as we encounter a wider
variety of exemplars and begin to draw systematic connections between
them, noting what they have in common, how they differ, and which of
these commonalities and differences matter, morally speaking.
Recognizable motivational profiles emerge and come to be labeled as
virtues or vices, and these, in turn, shape our understanding of the
obligations we have and the ends we should pursue. However, even
though the systematising of moral thought can travel a long way from
our starting point, according to the exemplarist it never reaches a
stage where reference to exemplars is replaced by the recognition of
something more fundamental. At the end of the day, according to the
exemplarist, our moral system still rests on our basic propensity to
take a liking (or disliking) to exemplars. Nevertheless, one could be
an agent-based theorist without advancing the exemplarist’s
account of the origins or reference conditions for judgments of good
and bad, virtuous and vicious.

2.3 Target-Centered Virtue Ethics

The touchstone for eudaimonist virtue ethicists is a flourishing human
life. For agent-based virtue ethicists it is an exemplary
agent’s motivations. The target-centered view developed by
Christine Swanton (2003), by contrast, begins with our existing
conceptions of the virtues. We already have a passable idea of which
traits are virtues and what they involve. Of course, this untutored
understanding can be clarified and improved, and it is one of the
tasks of the virtue ethicist to help us do precisely that. But rather
than stripping things back to something as basic as the motivations we
want to imitate or building it up to something as elaborate as an
entire flourishing life, the target-centered view begins where most
ethics students find themselves, namely, with the idea that
generosity, courage, self-discipline, compassion, and the like get a
tick of approval. It then examines what these traits involve.

A complete account of virtue will map out 1) its field, 2)
its mode of responsiveness, 3) its basis of moral
acknowledgment, and 4) its target. Different virtues are
concerned with different fields. Courage, for example, is
concerned with what might harm us, whereas generosity is concerned
with the sharing of time, talent, and property. The basis of
acknowledgment of a virtue is the feature within the virtue’s
field to which it responds. To continue with our previous examples,
generosity is attentive to the benefits that others might enjoy
through one’s agency, and courage responds to threats to value,
status, or the bonds that exist between oneself and particular others,
and the fear such threats might generate. A virtue’s
mode has to do with how it responds to the bases of
acknowledgment within its field. Generosity promotes a good,
namely, another’s benefit, whereas courage defends a
value, bond, or status. Finally, a virtue’s target is
that at which it is aimed. Courage aims to control fear and handle
danger, while generosity aims to share time, talents, or possessions
with others in ways that benefit them.

A virtue, on a target-centered account, “is a
disposition to respond to, or acknowledge, items within its field or
fields in an excellent or good enough way” (Swanton 2003: 19). A
virtuous act is an act that hits the target of a virtue,
which is to say that it succeeds in responding to items in its field
in the specified way (233). Providing a target-centered definition of
a right action requires us to move beyond the analysis of a
single virtue and the actions that follow from it. This is because a
single action context may involve a number of different, overlapping
fields. Determination might lead me to persist in trying to complete a
difficult task even if doing so requires a singleness of purpose. But
love for my family might make a different use of my time and
attention. In order to define right action a target-centered view must
explain how we handle different virtues’ conflicting claims on
our resources. There are at least three different ways to address this
challenge. A perfectionist target-centered account would
stipulate, “An act is right if and only if it is overall
virtuous, and that entails that it is the, or a, best action possible
in the circumstances” (239–240). A more
permissive target-centered account would not identify
‘right’ with ‘best’, but would allow an action
to count as right provided “it is good enough even if not the
(or a) best action” (240). A minimalist target-centered
account would not even require an action to be good in order to be
right. On such a view, “An act is right if and only if it is not
overall vicious” (240). (For further discussion of
target-centered virtue ethics see Van Zyl 2014; and Smith 2016).

2.4 Platonistic Virtue Ethics

The fourth form a virtue ethic might adopt takes its inspiration from
Plato. The Socrates of Plato’s dialogues devotes a great deal of
time to asking his fellow Athenians to explain the nature of virtues
like justice, courage, piety, and wisdom. So it is clear that Plato
counts as a virtue theorist. But it is a matter of some debate whether
he should be read as a virtue ethicist (White 2015). What is not open
to debate is whether Plato has had an important influence on the
contemporary revival of interest in virtue ethics. A number of those
who have contributed to the revival have done so as Plato scholars
(e.g., Prior 1991; Kamtekar 1998; Annas 1999; and Reshotko 2006).
However, often they have ended up championing a eudaimonist version of
virtue ethics (see Prior 2001 and Annas 2011), rather than a version
that would warrant a separate classification. Nevertheless, there are
two variants that call for distinct treatment.

Timothy Chappell takes the defining feature of Platonistic virtue
ethics to be that “Good agency in the truest and fullest sense
presupposes the contemplation of the Form of the Good” (2014).
Chappell follows Iris Murdoch in arguing that “In the moral life
the enemy is the fat relentless ego” (Murdoch 1971: 51).
Constantly attending to our needs, our desires, our passions, and our
thoughts skews our perspective on what the world is actually like and
blinds us to the goods around us. Contemplating the goodness of
something we encounter—which is to say, carefully attending to
it “for its own sake, in order to understand it” (Chappell
2014: 300)—breaks this natural tendency by drawing our attention
away from ourselves. Contemplating such goodness with regularity makes
room for new habits of thought that focus more readily and more
honestly on things other than the self. It alters the quality of our
consciousness. And “anything which alters consciousness in the
direction of unselfishness, objectivity, and realism is to be
connected with virtue” (Murdoch 1971: 82). The virtues get
defined, then, in terms of qualities that help one “pierce the
veil of selfish consciousness and join the world as it really
is” (91). And good agency is defined by the possession and
exercise of such virtues. Within Chappell’s and Murdoch’s
framework, then, not all normative properties get defined in terms of
virtue. Goodness, in particular, is not so defined. But the kind of
goodness which is possible for creatures like us is defined by virtue,
and any answer to the question of what one should do or how one should
live will appeal to the virtues.

Another Platonistic variant of virtue ethics is exemplified by Robert
Merrihew Adams. Unlike Murdoch and Chappell, his starting point is not
a set of claims about our consciousness of goodness. Rather, he begins
with an account of the metaphysics of goodness. Like Murdoch and
others influenced by Platonism, Adams’s account of goodness is
built around a conception of a supremely perfect good. And like
Augustine, Adams takes that perfect good to be God. God is both the
exemplification and the source of all goodness. Other things are good,
he suggests, to the extent that they resemble God (Adams 1999).

The resemblance requirement identifies a necessary condition for being
good, but it does not yet give us a sufficient condition. This is
because there are ways in which finite creatures might resemble God
that would not be suitable to the type of creature they are. For
example, if God were all-knowing, then the belief, “I am
all-knowing,” would be a suitable belief for God to have. In
God, such a belief—because true—would be part of
God’s perfection. However, as neither you nor I are all-knowing,
the belief, “I am all-knowing,” in one of us would not be
good. To rule out such cases we need to introduce another factor. That
factor is the fitting response to goodness, which Adams suggests is
love. Adams uses love to weed out problematic resemblances:
“being excellent in the way that a finite thing can be consists
in resembling God in a way that could serve God as a reason for loving
the thing” (Adams 1999: 36).

Virtues come into the account as one of the ways in which some things
(namely, persons) could resemble God. “[M]ost of the excellences
that are most important to us, and of whose value we are most
confident, are excellences of persons or of qualities or actions or
works or lives or stories of persons” (1999: 42). This is one of
the reasons Adams offers for conceiving of the ideal of perfection as
a personal God, rather than an impersonal form of the Good. Many of
the excellences of persons of which we are most confident are virtues
such as love, wisdom, justice, patience, and generosity. And within
many theistic traditions, including Adams’s own Christian
tradition, such virtues are commonly attributed to divine agents.

A Platonistic account like the one Adams puts forward in Finite
and Infinite Goods clearly does not derive all other normative
properties from the virtues (for a discussion of the relationship
between this view and the one he puts forward in A Theory of
Virtue (2006) see Pettigrove 2014). Goodness provides the
normative foundation. Virtues are not built on that foundation;
rather, as one of the varieties of goodness of whose value we are most
confident, virtues form part of the foundation. Obligations, by
contrast, come into the account at a different level. Moral
obligations, Adams argues, are determined by the expectations and
demands that “arise in a relationship or system of relationships
that is good or valuable” (1999: 244). Other things being equal,
the more virtuous the parties to the relationship, the more binding
the obligation. Thus, within Adams’s account, the good (which
includes virtue) is prior to the right. However, once good
relationships have given rise to obligations, those obligations take
on a life of their own. Their bindingness is not traced directly to
considerations of goodness. Rather, they are determined by the
expectations of the parties and the demands of the relationship.

3. Objections to virtue ethics

A number of objections have been raised against virtue ethics, some of
which bear more directly on one form of virtue ethics than on others.
In this section we consider eight objections, namely, the a)
application, b) adequacy, c) relativism, d) conflict, e)
self-effacement, f) justification, g) egoism, and h) situationist
problems.

a) In the early days of virtue ethics’ revival, the approach was
associated with an “anti-codifiability” thesis about
ethics, directed against the prevailing pretensions of normative
theory. At the time, utilitarians and deontologists commonly (though
not universally) held that the task of ethical theory was to come up
with a code consisting of universal rules or principles (possibly only
one, as in the case of act-utilitarianism) which would have two
significant features: i) the rule(s) would amount to a decision
procedure for determining what the right action was in any particular
case; ii) the rule(s) would be stated in such terms that any
non-virtuous person could understand and apply it (them) correctly.

Virtue ethicists maintained, contrary to these two claims, that it was
quite unrealistic to imagine that there could be such a code (see, in
particular, McDowell 1979). The results of attempts to produce and
employ such a code, in the heady days of the 1960s and 1970s, when
medical and then bioethics boomed and bloomed, tended to support the
virtue ethicists’ claim. More and more utilitarians and
deontologists found themselves agreed on their general rules but on
opposite sides of the controversial moral issues in contemporary
discussion. It came to be recognised that moral sensitivity,
perception, imagination, and judgement informed by
experience—phronesis in short—is needed to apply
rules or principles correctly. Hence many (though by no means all)
utilitarians and deontologists have explicitly abandoned (ii) and much
less emphasis is placed on (i).

Nevertheless, the complaint that virtue ethics does not produce
codifiable principles is still a commonly voiced criticism of the
approach, expressed as the objection that it is, in principle, unable
to provide action-guidance.

Initially, the objection was based on a misunderstanding. Blinkered by
slogans that described virtue ethics as “concerned with Being
rather than Doing”, as addressing “What sort of person
should I be?” but not “What should I do?” as being
“agent-centered rather than act-centered”, its critics
maintained that it was unable to provide action-guidance and hence,
rather than being a normative rival to utilitarian and deontological
ethics, could claim to be no more than a valuable supplement to them.
The rather odd idea was that all virtue ethics could offer was
“Identify a moral exemplar and do what he would do” as
though the raped fifteen-year-old trying to decide whether or not to
have an abortion was supposed to ask herself “Would Socrates
have had an abortion if he were in my circumstances?”

But the objection failed to take note of Anscombe’s hint that a
great deal of specific action guidance could be found in rules
employing the virtue and vice terms (“v-rules”) such as
“Do what is honest/charitable; do not do what is
dishonest/uncharitable” (Hursthouse 1999). (It is a noteworthy
feature of our virtue and vice vocabulary that, although our list of
generally recognised virtue terms is comparatively short, our list of
vice terms is remarkably, and usefully, long, far exceeding anything
that anyone who thinks in terms of standard deontological rules has
ever come up with. Much invaluable action guidance comes from avoiding
courses of action that would be irresponsible, feckless, lazy,
inconsiderate, uncooperative, harsh, intolerant, selfish, mercenary,
indiscreet, tactless, arrogant, unsympathetic, cold, incautious,
unenterprising, pusillanimous, feeble, presumptuous, rude,
hypocritical, self-indulgent, materialistic, grasping, short-sighted,
vindictive, calculating, ungrateful, grudging, brutal, profligate,
disloyal, and on and on.)

(b) A closely related objection has to do with whether virtue ethics
can provide an adequate account of right action. This worry can take
two forms. (i) One might think a virtue ethical account of right
action is extensionally inadequate. It is possible to perform a right
action without being virtuous and a virtuous person can occasionally
perform the wrong action without that calling her virtue into
question. If virtue is neither necessary nor sufficient for right
action, one might wonder whether the relationship between
rightness/wrongness and virtue/vice is close enough for the former to
be identified in terms of the latter. (ii) Alternatively, even if one
thought it possible to produce a virtue ethical account that picked
out all (and only) right actions, one might still think that at least
in some cases virtue is not what explains rightness (Adams
2006:6–8).

Some virtue ethicists respond to the adequacy objection by rejecting
the assumption that virtue ethics ought to be in the business of
providing an account of right action in the first place. Following in
the footsteps of Anscombe (1958) and MacIntyre (1985), Talbot Brewer
(2009) argues that to work with the categories of rightness and
wrongness is already to get off on the wrong foot. Contemporary
conceptions of right and wrong action, built as they are around a
notion of moral duty that presupposes a framework of divine (or moral)
law or around a conception of obligation that is defined in contrast
to self-interest, carry baggage the virtue ethicist is better off
without. Virtue ethics can address the questions of how one should
live, what kind of person one should become, and even what one should
do without that committing it to providing an account of ‘right
action’. One might choose, instead, to work with aretaic
concepts (defined in terms of virtues and vices) and axiological
concepts (defined in terms of good and bad, better and worse) and
leave out deontic notions (like right/wrong action, duty, and
obligation) altogether.

Other virtue ethicists wish to retain the concept of right action but
note that in the current philosophical discussion a number of distinct
qualities march under that banner. In some contexts, ‘right
action’ identifies the best action an agent might perform in the
circumstances. In others, it designates an action that is commendable
(even if not the best possible). In still others, it picks out actions
that are not blameworthy (even if not commendable). A virtue ethicist
might choose to define one of these—for example, the best
action—in terms of virtues and vices, but appeal to other
normative concepts—such as legitimate expectations—when
defining other conceptions of right action.

As we observed in section 2, a virtue ethical account need not attempt
to reduce all other normative concepts to virtues and vices.
What is required is simply (i) that virtue is not reduced to
some other normative concept that is taken to be more fundamental and
(ii) that some other normative concepts are explained in
terms of virtue and vice. This takes the sting out of the adequacy
objection, which is most compelling against versions of virtue ethics
that attempt to define all of the senses of ‘right action’
in terms of virtues. Appealing to virtues and vices makes it
much easier to achieve extensional adequacy. Making room for normative
concepts that are not taken to be reducible to virtue and vice
concepts makes it even easier to generate a theory that is both
extensionally and explanatorily adequate. Whether one needs other
concepts and, if so, how many, is still a matter of debate among
virtue ethicists, as is the question of whether virtue ethics even
ought to be offering an account of right action. Either way virtue
ethicists have resources available to them to address the adequacy
objection.

Insofar as the different versions of virtue ethics all retain an
emphasis on the virtues, they are open to the familiar problem of (c)
the charge of cultural relativity. Is it not the case that different
cultures embody different virtues, (MacIntyre 1985) and hence that the
v-rules will pick out actions as right or wrong only relative to a
particular culture? Different replies have been made to this charge.
One—the tu quoque, or “partners in crime”
response—exhibits a quite familiar pattern in virtue
ethicists’ defensive strategy (Solomon 1988). They admit that,
for them, cultural relativism is a challenge, but point out
that it is just as much a problem for the other two approaches. The
(putative) cultural variation in character traits regarded as virtues
is no greater—indeed markedly less—than the cultural
variation in rules of conduct, and different cultures have different
ideas about what constitutes happiness or welfare. That cultural
relativity should be a problem common to all three approaches is
hardly surprising. It is related, after all, to the
“justification problem”
(see below)
the quite general metaethical problem of justifying one’s moral
beliefs to those who disagree, whether they be moral sceptics,
pluralists or from another culture.

A bolder strategy involves claiming that virtue ethics has less
difficulty with cultural relativity than the other two approaches.
Much cultural disagreement arises, it may be claimed, from local
understandings of the virtues, but the virtues themselves are not
relative to culture (Nussbaum 1993).

Another objection to which the tu quoque response is
partially appropriate is (d) “the conflict problem.” What
does virtue ethics have to say about dilemmas—cases in which,
apparently, the requirements of different virtues conflict because
they point in opposed directions? Charity prompts me to kill the
person who would be better off dead, but justice forbids it. Honesty
points to telling the hurtful truth, kindness and compassion to
remaining silent or even lying. What shall I do? Of course, the same
sorts of dilemmas are generated by conflicts between deontological
rules. Deontology and virtue ethics share the conflict problem (and
are happy to take it on board rather than follow some of the
utilitarians in their consequentialist resolutions of such dilemmas)
and in fact their strategies for responding to it are parallel. Both
aim to resolve a number of dilemmas by arguing that the conflict is
merely apparent; a discriminating understanding of the virtues or
rules in question, possessed only by those with practical wisdom, will
perceive that, in this particular case, the virtues do not make
opposing demands or that one rule outranks another, or has a certain
exception clause built into it. Whether this is all there is to it
depends on whether there are any irresolvable dilemmas. If there are,
proponents of either normative approach may point out reasonably that
it could only be a mistake to offer a resolution of what is, ex
hypothesi, irresolvable.

Another problem arguably shared by all three approaches is (e), that
of being self-effacing. An ethical theory is self-effacing if,
roughly, whatever it claims justifies a particular action, or makes it
right, had better not be the agent’s motive for doing it.
Michael Stocker (1976) originally introduced it as a problem for
deontology and consequentialism. He pointed out that the agent who,
rightly, visits a friend in hospital will rather lessen the impact of
his visit on her if he tells her either that he is doing it because it
is his duty or because he thought it would maximize the general
happiness. But as Simon Keller observes, she won’t be any better
pleased if he tells her that he is visiting her because it is what a
virtuous agent would do, so virtue ethics would appear to have the
problem too (Keller 2007). However, virtue ethics’ defenders
have argued that not all forms of virtue ethics are subject to this
objection (Pettigrove 2011) and those that are are not seriously
undermined by the problem (Martinez 2011).

Another problem for virtue ethics, which is shared by both
utilitarianism and deontology, is (f)
“the justification problem.”
Abstractly conceived, this is the problem of how we justify or ground
our ethical beliefs, an issue that is hotly debated at the level of
metaethics. In its particular versions, for deontology there is the
question of how to justify its claims that certain moral rules are the
correct ones, and for utilitarianism of how to justify its claim that
all that really matters morally are consequences for happiness or
well-being. For virtue ethics, the problem concerns the question of
which character traits are the virtues.

In the metaethical debate, there is widespread disagreement about the
possibility of providing an external foundation for
ethics—“external” in the sense of being external to
ethical beliefs—and the same disagreement is found amongst
deontologists and utilitarians. Some believe that their normative
ethics can be placed on a secure basis, resistant to any form of
scepticism, such as what anyone rationally desires, or would accept or
agree on, regardless of their ethical outlook; others that it
cannot.

Virtue ethicists have eschewed any attempt to ground virtue ethics in
an external foundation while continuing to maintain that their claims
can be validated. Some follow a form of Rawls’s coherentist
approach (Slote 2001; Swanton 2003); neo-Aristotelians a form of
ethical naturalism.

A misunderstanding of eudaimonia as an unmoralized concept
leads some critics to suppose that the neo-Aristotelians are
attempting to ground their claims in a scientific account of human
nature and what counts, for a human being, as flourishing. Others
assume that, if this is not what they are doing, they cannot be
validating their claims that, for example, justice, charity, courage,
and generosity are virtues. Either they are illegitimately helping
themselves to Aristotle’s discredited natural teleology
(Williams 1985) or producing mere rationalizations of their own
personal or culturally inculcated values. But McDowell, Foot,
MacIntyre and Hursthouse have all outlined versions of a third way
between these two extremes. Eudaimonia in virtue ethics, is
indeed a moralized concept, but it is not only that. Claims about what
constitutes flourishing for human beings no more float free of
scientific facts about what human beings are like than ethological
claims about what constitutes flourishing for elephants. In both
cases, the truth of the claims depends in part on what kind
of animal they are and what capacities, desires and interests the
humans or elephants have.

The best available science today (including evolutionary theory and
psychology) supports rather than undermines the ancient Greek
assumption that we are social animals, like elephants and wolves and
unlike polar bears. No rationalizing explanation in terms of anything
like a social contract is needed to explain why we choose to live
together, subjugating our egoistic desires in order to secure the
advantages of co-operation. Like other social animals, our natural
impulses are not solely directed towards our own pleasures and
preservation, but include altruistic and cooperative ones.

This basic fact about us should make more comprehensible the claim
that the virtues are at least partially constitutive of human
flourishing and also undercut the objection that virtue ethics is, in
some sense, egoistic.

(g) The egoism objection has a number of sources. One is a simple
confusion. Once it is understood that the fully virtuous agent
characteristically does what she should without inner conflict, it is
triumphantly asserted that “she is only doing what she
wants to do and hence is being selfish.” So when the
generous person gives gladly, as the generous are wont to do, it turns
out she is not generous and unselfish after all, or at least not as
generous as the one who greedily wants to hang on to everything she
has but forces herself to give because she thinks she should! A
related version ascribes bizarre reasons to the virtuous agent,
unjustifiably assuming that she acts as she does because she
believes that acting thus on this occasion will help her to achieve
eudaimonia. But “the virtuous agent” is just
“the agent with the virtues” and it is part of our
ordinary understanding of the virtue terms that each carries with it
its own typical range of reasons for acting. The virtuous agent acts
as she does because she believes that someone’s suffering will
be averted, or someone benefited, or the truth established, or a debt
repaid, or … thereby.

It is the exercise of the virtues during one’s life that is held
to be at least partially constitutive of eudaimonia, and this
is consistent with recognising that bad luck may land the virtuous
agent in circumstances that require her to give up her life. Given the
sorts of considerations that courageous, honest, loyal, charitable
people wholeheartedly recognise as reasons for action, they may find
themselves compelled to face danger for a worthwhile end, to speak out
in someone’s defence, or refuse to reveal the names of their
comrades, even when they know that this will inevitably lead to their
execution, to share their last crust and face starvation. On the view
that the exercise of the virtues is necessary but not sufficient for
eudaimonia, such cases are described as those in which the
virtuous agent sees that, as things have unfortunately turned out,
eudaimonia is not possible for them (Foot 2001, 95). On the
Stoical view that it is both necessary and sufficient, a
eudaimon life is a life that has been successfully lived
(where “success” of course is not to be understood in a
materialistic way) and such people die knowing not only that they have
made a success of their lives but that they have also brought their
lives to a markedly successful completion. Either way, such heroic
acts can hardly be regarded as egoistic.

A lingering suggestion of egoism may be found in the misconceived
distinction between so-called “self-regarding” and
“other-regarding” virtues. Those who have been insulated
from the ancient tradition tend to regard justice and benevolence as
real virtues, which benefit others but not their possessor, and
prudence, fortitude and providence (the virtue whose opposite is
“improvidence” or being a spendthrift) as not real virtues
at all because they benefit only their possessor. This is a mistake on
two counts. Firstly, justice and benevolence do, in general, benefit
their possessors, since without them eudaimonia is not
possible. Secondly, given that we live together, as social animals,
the “self-regarding” virtues do benefit others—those
who lack them are a great drain on, and sometimes grief to, those who
are close to them (as parents with improvident or imprudent adult
offspring know only too well).

The most recent objection (h) to virtue ethics claims that work in
“situationist” social psychology shows that there are no
such things as character traits and thereby no such things as virtues
for virtue ethics to be about (Doris 1998; Harman 1999). In reply,
some virtue ethicists have argued that the social psychologists’
studies are irrelevant to the multi-track disposition (see above) that
a virtue is supposed to be (Sreenivasan 2002; Kamtekar 2004). Mindful
of just how multi-track it is, they agree that it would be reckless in
the extreme to ascribe a demanding virtue such as charity to people of
whom they know no more than that they have exhibited conventional
decency; this would indeed be “a fundamental attribution
error.” Others have worked to develop alternative, empirically
grounded conceptions of character traits (Snow 2010; Miller 2013 and
2014; however see Upton 2016 for objections to Miller). There have
been other responses as well (summarized helpfully in Prinz 2009 and
Miller 2014). Notable among these is a response by Adams (2006,
echoing Merritt 2000) who steers a middle road between “no
character traits at all” and the exacting standard of the
Aristotelian conception of virtue which, because of its emphasis on
phronesis, requires a high level of character integration. On his
conception, character traits may be “frail and
fragmentary” but still virtues, and not uncommon. But giving up
the idea that practical wisdom is the heart of all the virtues, as
Adams has to do, is a substantial sacrifice, as Russell (2009) and
Kamtekar (2010) argue.

Even though the “situationist challenge” has left
traditional virtue ethicists unmoved, it has generated a healthy
engagement with empirical psychological literature, which has also
been fuelled by the growing literature on Foot’s Natural
Goodness and, quite independently, an upsurge of interest in
character education (see below).

4. Future Directions

Over the past thirty-five years most of those contributing to the
revival of virtue ethics have worked within a neo-Aristotelian,
eudaimonist framework. However, as noted in section 2, other forms of
virtue ethics have begun to emerge. Theorists have begun to turn to
philosophers like Hutcheson, Hume, Nietzsche, Martineau, and Heidegger
for resources they might use to develop alternatives (see Russell
2006; Swanton 2013 and 2015; Taylor 2015; and Harcourt 2015). Others
have turned their attention eastward, exploring Confucian, Buddhist,
and Hindu traditions (Yu 2007; Slingerland 2011; Finnigan and Tanaka
2011; McRae 2012; Angle and Slote 2013; Davis 2014; Flanagan 2015;
Perrett and Pettigrove 2015; and Sim 2015). These explorations promise
to open up new avenues for the development of virtue ethics.

Although virtue ethics has grown remarkably in the last thirty-five
years, it is still very much in the minority, particularly in the area
of applied ethics. Many editors of big textbook collections on
“moral problems” or “applied ethics” now try
to include articles representative of each of the three normative
approaches but are often unable to find a virtue ethics article
addressing a particular issue. This is sometimes, no doubt, because
“the” issue has been set up as a
deontologicial/utilitarian debate, but it is often simply because no
virtue ethicist has yet written on the topic. However, the last decade
has seen an increase in the amount of attention applied virtue ethics
has received (Walker and Ivanhoe 2007; Hartman 2013; Austin 2014; Van
Hooft 2014; and Annas 2015). This area can certainly be expected to
grow in the future, and it looks as though applying virtue ethics in
the field of environmental ethics may prove particularly fruitful
(Sandler 2007; Hursthouse 2007, 2011; Zwolinski and Schmidtz 2013;
Cafaro 2015).

Whether virtue ethics can be expected to grow into “virtue
politics”—i.e. to extend from moral philosophy into
political philosophy—is not so clear. Gisela Striker (2006) has
argued that Aristotle’s ethics cannot be understood adequately
without attending to its place in his politics. That suggests that at
least those virtue ethicists who take their inspiration from Aristotle
should have resources to offer for the development of virtue politics.
But, while Plato and Aristotle can be great inspirations as far as
virtue ethics is concerned, neither, on the face of it, are attractive
sources of insight where politics is concerned. However, recent work
suggests that Aristotelian ideas can, after all, generate a
satisfyingly liberal political philosophy (Nussbaum 2006; LeBar
2013a). Moreover, as noted above, virtue ethics does not have to be
neo-Aristotelian. It may be that the virtue ethics of Hutcheson and
Hume can be naturally extended into a modern political philosophy
(Hursthouse 1990–91; Slote 1993).

Following Plato and Aristotle, modern virtue ethics has always
emphasised the importance of moral education, not as the inculcation
of rules but as the training of character. There is now a growing
movement towards virtues education, amongst both academics (Carr 1999;
Athanassoulis 2014; Curren 2015) and teachers in the classroom. One
exciting thing about research in this area is its engagement with
other academic disciplines, including psychology, educational theory,
and theology (see Cline 2015; and Snow 2015).

Finally, one of the more productive developments of virtue ethics has
come through the study of particular virtues and vices. There are now
a number of careful studies of the cardinal virtues and capital vices
(Pieper 1966; Taylor 2006; Curzer 2012; Timpe and Boyd 2014). Others
have explored less widely discussed virtues or vices, such as
civility, decency, truthfulness, ambition, and meekness (Calhoun 2000;
Kekes 2002; Williams 2002; and Pettigrove 2007 and 2012). One of the
questions these studies raise is “How many virtues are
there?” A second is, “How are these virtues related to one
another?” Some virtue ethicists have been happy to work on the
assumption that there is no principled reason for limiting the number
of virtues and plenty of reason for positing a plurality of them
(Swanton 2003; Battaly 2015). Others have been concerned that such an
open-handed approach to the virtues will make it difficult for virtue
ethicists to come up with an adequate account of right action or deal
with the conflict problem discussed above. Dan Russell has proposed
cardinality and a version of the unity thesis as a solution to what he
calls “the enumeration problem” (the problem of too many
virtues). The apparent proliferation of virtues can be significantly
reduced if we group virtues together with some being cardinal and
others subordinate extensions of those cardinal virtues. Possible
conflicts between the remaining virtues can then be managed if they
are tied together in some way as part of a unified whole (Russell
2009). This highlights two important avenues for future research, one
of which explores individual virtues and the other of which analyses
how they might be related to one another.

Bibliography

Adams, Robert Merrihew, 1999, Finite and Infinite Goods,
New York: Oxford University Press.